HTC Windows Phone 8 specs leaked for three new phones

The dust has barely settled from the Windows Phone Summit and we are now seeing leaked specs on three new HTC Windows Phone 8 devices. Here's what we know about the Rio, Accord and Zenith.

Rio: The Rio would be considered an entry level Windows Phone featuring a 4" WVGA display, 5mp camera with 720p video capture, 512mb on board memory, 14.4Mbps HSPA and a Qualcomm MSM8227 processor.

Accord: Stepping up from the Rio will be the Accord that features a 4.3" 720p Super LCD 2 screen, an 8mp camera with 1080p video capture, NFC support, 1gb of RAM, dual-core processor and 42Mbps HSPA+.

Zenith: The Zenith will be the upper end model featuring a 4.7" 720p Super LCD 2 screen, 8mp camera with 1080p video capture, 42Mbps HSPA+, and a quad-core Qualcomm processor.

All three Windows Phone 8 devices are slated to ship this year with the Rio and Accord scheduled tentatively for October and the Zenith later in the fourth quarter (in time for Christmas?). Granted all these projections are dependent on how smoothly and timely Microsoft has Windows Phone 8 ready and all the carrier involvement that we have grown to love.

More pixels doesn't mean a better camera. Especially with that small sensor low light pics should take better on an 8mp camera than a 16. Big pixel counts are for the most part, especially on phones, gimmicks.

More MP are good if you're going to enlarge significantly and can deal with the noise, or use photo editing software to smooth it out. There is many apps that could help on that. So you are saying an 8mp cam can take better pics than a 41mp cam like the one on pureview? I stand on needing a phone with bigger pixel with the right software its a perfect cam.

Nice, I am probably going to stick to an HTC phone since they are the only Windows Phones I found to have great music sound quality for headphones. My Titan 2 sounds way better than my Focus S and my cousins Lumia 900. Although I do miss the Super AMOLED display and camera from the Focus S.

Not sure if you have seen the accessories for samsung's NFC on the GS3, but it's amazing. They have little NFC stickers for you to put up in your house, car or office that link to phone apps. Want to turn on WiFi when you get home? Put a sticker on you coffee table that activates your phones WiFi when you tap it. NFC accessories are going to own.

Well the Rio sounds a lot like current WP specs. Singlecore Snapdragon + 512 MB Ram. Sounds to me it would have been perfectly possible - as well as reasonable - to update the L900 (as opposed to retiring the flagship a few months after launch).

Even though the specs may be similar there is no "easy" update to wp8. Since it is an entirely different kernal you couldn't just update it would require a complete reinstall. That being said I don't see why the folks at XDA couldn't throw together a ROM to flash a month or two later.

They can't upgrade the Lumia 900 to WP8 because of all the new Security features in WP8 -- Secure boot and Bitlocker require additional hardware.
They probably developer WP8 so that Secure Boot and Bitlocker will always be on and therefore the Lumia 900 doesn't support those features and can't run WP8.
Also --
Everyone also needs to remember that yesterday was developer announcements -- not consumer announcements.
We really have no idea what all will and won't be included in WP 7.8.

Nice to see this happening. My only initial concern is that HTC likes to overlay their own UI wtih the stock system. See sense on top of android for an example. Hopefully, microsoft will not allow this and keep the ability to remove unwanted bloatware such as the HTC button located on the homescreen live tiles.

I am curious to see what nokia comes up with and I hope all of this progresses smoothly. As a current android user, I am very interstsed in WP and the direction they are taking. If good phones keep coming out and there is a significant increase in app development, it is likely that I will make the switch.

They can't overlay anything over the OS, even if they wanted to. I have a HTC HD7 - the only things from HTC are their exclusive apps like HTC Hub, Sound Enhancer, Photo Enhancer, Attentive Phone etc. These are all apps and can be uninstalled in an instant. It's not like Android - there's nothing they can force on you.

You can delete ANY third part software not from the base OS. And, you can control all tasks that run in the background that aren't OS. Two HUGE advantages for WP that iOS and Android don't have (at least, neither have both exactly).

Am I missing something here? I agree with AwesomeAndy. It seems that all the mid-level, recent phones that were inroduced since Nov 2011 should be capable of running WP8. Less than 5 minutes into his speech at the WP8 Summit, Joe mentioned how the new core / kernel would allow them to target a larger array of hardware, from lower resource phones to top-of-the-line high-end phones. If that is the case, why can't it be installed on all the Lumia 900's, HTC Titan/Titan II's, Samsung Focus S/Flash/2's out here. Bottom line is this, the new kernel will work just fine on current Mango phones. Just sayin'.
Cheers!

As I have just replied to others, AwesomeAndy;s post is incorrect. He assumes that the Rio is using a single-core, the MSM8227 is a dual-core, and the S4 line of SoC's in which WP8 will be using contain no single-core SoC's. There is nothing indicative in any of these leaked specs that indicates that WP8 should be able to run on pre-existing hardware. If it could, then it would. They have created a new shared kernel, which is designed around the S4 line, single-core chips will not efficiently run the new kernel (and most likely just plainly wont run it)

This is really funny, and I have just glanced at AwsomeAndy's post, The Rio proves that current Gen (except Lumia 610 etc) would have been able to run Windows 8, I don't think they wanted to mess on to write all the necessary code to change the phone from WinCE to Win8. But yes it seems like it would run my HD7 has a 1ghz Snapdragon, 512mb Ram and 5mp camera with 720p playback, I also think that the Rio phone with it being a entry level one would be the one with the standard resolution.

I bet most of the phones will have the useless and ugly Nokia design (they have no style) plus I would never buy a Nokia phone, they seem to fall apart to design flaws. HTC all the way.

AwesomeAndy's post is incorrect. The Rio is running a dual-core and he assumes it would be a single-core. Also just because specs are similar does not mean current phones could run the new OS. The kernel is completly different and is built around the Qualcomm S4 line of SoC's.

It's not managed the same. On WP7 it could recognize an SD card, but it formatted it as an extension of the system RAM so it was one big total space. If you removed the card, it was not readable in another device. In WP8/W8, it will have true removeable storage capability where you can swap them to other devices and move files around, etc.

My concern is that in a year or two, Windows Phone 9 will be shown on S6 chips, and this series will be stuck with 8.9 because "they're incapable of handling the new software." It happened with 6 to 7, and now 7 to 8...

So you don't ever want new features or new hardware to be supported? You want only incremental improvements forever? Advancing software means eventually outdating old hardware. It happens. Two years is a long time to support hardware!

Everyone, we finally have WPs with great hardware. Quit being killjoys. The majority of u know your going to upgrade anyway, so chill. The NT kernel is gonna be the base from here on out so the issue of not being able to upgrade future phones is not gonna be a issue. I love my lumia but imagine what Nokia has in store for WP8!!!!

You keep using that word... It's not even remotely close to obselete. You'll get 7.8, and for the first couple months I'm sure you won't feel the pain of not having a new phone. Just use your current one till the upgrade is up then move on.

The zenith will hopefully take a good share of the android market. Lots of people look at how many cores their phones are. Even though windows phones won't probably need it, its still a good selling point. Its like looking at computers. 16gb of ram? Not ever gonna use it but it's there.

LOL listen to you. Watch the MSFT video. They clearly stated the windows 8 kernel in windows phone gets all the benefits of windows 8 including up to 64 core support. That means, not only is windows phone 8 going to have 4 cores. but it can still take 60 more.
surprised? don't be. this is windows NT on a phone, not windows CE. the days where windows phone was held back because of the OS are over. Anybody betting this will be a repeat of 2011 where WP lagged should get ready for a good spanking :)

hmm ,w ell im sure you can find a COMPASS app int he marketplace.... but what’s happening is that newer phone have Gyroscope witch older model DONT witch allows for a more accurate reading.. i guess? im not sure.

I've had the arrive since it launched. Bought it over other models cause I really wasn't sure about the accuracy of the on screen keyboard. I almost never use it now, it's dead weight that doesn't serve a purpose because the default on screen keyboard is so good. It's just my opinion, but with wp8 leveraging the power of directx, I think a slide out game pad would be very useful indeed.

Sounds like the One series. With the rio being the one v, accord being the one s, and the zenith being the one x. So it is probably true since HTC invested a lot in that hardware and it has been well recieved so it makes sense for them to reuse it with windows phone 8. While i would like to see some orginal hardware for WP8, the one series has a lot of great hardware in it.